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loudTopic: Yahoo Chat Stuff
Saddam's Terrorist Blueprints
By Joel Mowbray
Ask even news-savvy Americans what they know about Saddam's plans to deploy suicide bombers against the West, and the most common response will be blank stares. Ditto for asking about how Saddam's thugs trained thousands of terrorists from around the Arab world, right up through 2002.
↓Both stunning revelations surfaced recently, one in Congressional testimony last month and the other in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. The Pentagon has known about these items on Saddam's terrorist agenda since the end of 2003, which is when it received the after-action analysis report it had commissioned. (It served as the basis for the testimony and the magazine article.) Now declassified, the book-length report analyzed thousands of Iraqi documents and interviews with over 100 officials of Saddam's regime to piece together what was going on in the tyranny's final days. Much of it is darkly humorous, such as the lengths to which minions would go to deceive Saddam or how the despot actually appeared to believe the ridiculous propaganda spewed by Baghdad Bob. To the extent the report or its summaries were covered by the mainstream media, attention mostly was focused on the finding that Saddam apparently behaved himself in late 2002 and early 2003 in a vain attempt to stave off the invasion. Yet entirely ignored by the supposedly objective news outlets were the rather newsworthy items indicating that, in fact, Saddam was interested in exporting terror.
According to a Nexis search, only four news outlets have even mentioned "Blessed July," which was, in the words of the Foreign Affairs article, "a regime-directed wave of 'martyrdom' operations against targets in the West." All nine articles were editorials or opinion pieces. The New York Times essentially avoided covering the report or the magazine summary of it, as the paper instead excerpted a book co-authored by one of its reporters that relied heavily on the report. Even the Associated Press declined to print a quick mention that preparations for "Blessed July," again quoting from the magazine article, "were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion."
The Washington Post, however, did cover the release of the Foreign Affairs article, but with this headline: "U.S. Said To Misread Hussein On Arms." The not-so-subtle implication of the rather brief story was that Saddam didn't pose as big a threat as we thought. In the weeks following the Post article, the full report was released and its authors appeared before Congress. Neither event triggered additional coverage.
Even if Post reporters missed the section in the 230-page report on terror training camps operated by the Fedayeen Saddam, the militia of soldiers most loyal to the ruthless ruler, that issue was raised again in Congressional hearings last month. The camps, which were started in 1994, trained some 7,200 Iraqis in the art of terrorism in the first year alone. "Beginning in 1998," according to the full report, "these camps began hosting 'Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, 'the Gulf,' and Syria.'"
So in the late 1990's and beyond, during which time conventional wisdom tells us that Saddam was "contained," Iraq was training thousands of terrorists from across the Arab world. Saddam was not slowing down. "The training activity of the groups were increasing both internal and apparently external. It was increasing over time," testified Lt. Col. Kevin Woods (retired), the report's chief author.
Many Democrats, leading leftists, and even ostensibly objective members of the Fourth Estate scoff at Bush's contention that the war in Iraq was a necessary component of the war on terror. Yet when fairly compelling proof emerges that Saddam was actively involved in both training terrorists and planning attacks, the collective response was silence.
Most baffling, though, is that the White House has been equally silent.
Joel Mowbray is author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America's Security.Front Page Magazine ~ Joel Mowbray **
Saddam's Terrorist Blueprints News like this is just too damned inconvenient for the liberal press to share. It blows away all their conspiracy theories and should take the wind out of the "Bush Lied" college campus protests.
But then what news is to be had in a non-protest? So we march forward, secure in the knowledge that Democrats and the press will obfuscate, shield, and cover up any information which doesn't help to keep President Bush's poll numbers down. November 2006 is going to fluster them again, isn't it?
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 10:38 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 10 May 2006 10:49 AM EDT
spacey
It only took this "intellectual, smarter than everyone else" libtard about five-and-a-half years to discover left-wing hatred for Bush...
Digital Lynch Mob
Kapow! Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails. A day later, I got 1,000 more. By the fourth day, the number had reached 3,499 -- a figure that does not include the usual offers of nubile Russian women or loot from African dictators. The Colbert messages began with Patrick Manley ("You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face") and ended with Ron ("Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER") who was so proud of his thought that he copied countless others. Ron, you're a genius.
Truth to tell, I peeked into only a few of the e-mails. I did this because I would sometimes recognize a name I thought I knew, which was almost always a mistake. When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden verbal sewage right in the face.
Usually, the subject line said it all. Some were friendly and agreed that Colbert had not been funny. Most, though, were in what we shall call disagreement. Fine. I said the man wasn't funny and not funny has a bullying quality to it; others (including some of my friends) said he was funny. But because I held such a view, my attentive critics were convinced I had a political agenda. I was -- as was most of the press, I found out -- George W. Bush's lap dog. If this is the case, Bush had better check his lap.
It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger. If I was over a certain age -- which I am -- I am simply out of it, wherever "it" may be. All in all, I was -- I am, and I guess I remain -- the worthy object of ignorant, false and downright idiotic vituperation.
What to make of all this? First, it's not about Colbert. His show has an audience of about 1 million -- not exactly "American Idol" numbers. Second, it marks the end of a silly pretense about interactive media: We give you our e-mail addresses and then, in theory, we have this nice chat. Forget about it. Not only is e-mail too often a kind of epistolary spitball, but there's no way I can even read the 3,506 e-mails now backed up in my queue -- seven more since I started writing this column.
But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.
The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations. I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America -- the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice -- once because they couldn't stop it and once more at the polls.
chatty
Limbaugh Theory of Relativity
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This might be an excellent time for me to explain to you my latest mathematical formula, ladies and gentlemen. I mentioned this in the previous hour. Everybody is wondering how can it be that the mainstream media, the Drive-By Media, is losing so much influence, and they are, I mean you see the newspaper circulation. We had the numbers yesterday, down, TV ratings, down, compared to all-time highs back in the eighties. There is a new media out there that consists of talk radio, Fox News, and the blogosphere. They don't have their monopoly anymore. They don't have the automatic ability in one night to shape opinion on anything. They used to have that power. They don't any longer. But despite the fact that they are losing influence, how at the same time are they able to do so much damage? This requires a formula much like Einstein had his theory of relativity, 
How can the Drive-By Media, in such disrepute, create so much negativity? Employment is up, unemployment is down, retirement funds are up, household net worth is up, consumer confidence is up, home ownership is up, virtually every economic statistic that matters is up. How can the reality be so good and the perception be so bad? Well, much as Einstein had his theory of relativity, we here at the Limbaugh Institute have come up with our own theory of relativity for the mainstream media. Here's the formula. We'll put this on the website so you can actually see it. You can play around with it yourself. Here's the formula as expressed. MMI = BS times T squared. MMI = BS x T2. Here's what the symbols in the formula mean. MMI is mainstream media influence. We could call it DBMI, Drive-By Media influence. BS of course equals BS, Barbra Streisand. And the T, equals the time in days. So the formula is MMI = BS times time squared, T squared. Time squared.
That is the media effect day after day, gloom. Day after day, pessimism. Day after day, housing bubble. Day after day, class warfare. Day after day, high gasoline price. Day after day, no future. Day after day, your kids inheriting a giant deficit. They'll never be able to have the life that their parents had. Then they'll run little stories in the so-called evening news, did you lose your job today? Will you lose your job tomorrow? Will your neighbor lose his job tomorrow? Did your neighbor lose his last three jobs during the Bush administration? I'm not sure who said this. "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." Was that Joseph Goebbels? [Lenin] It had to be a Nazi that did it. If there was ever a need for the Limbaugh theory of relativity, it is now, today, this time in our nation's history. The Drive-By Media influence on the economy is one thing. I mean, that's about money. But that influence, the Drive-By Media influence on the war on Islamofascism is another thing. That's about lives. That's about the future of civilization. How can vital interests, national security and so forth, be turned into doom and gloom? Easy. MMI = BS x T2. Time squared, day after day, bad news, day after day, if it bleeds, it leads. Day after day, we don't want to take sides with America because we're not sure that America deserves to win, because we're not sure that America is itself a just cause anymore.
By the way, the Limbaugh Theory, my formula here works just as well with our leadership. We need a strong president to deal with the Iran problem. We need a strong president to lead a flaccid United Nations, a strong president to try to inspire a tired, worn-out Europe. So how can this president, with this economy and this domestic peace, be so low in the polls? MMI = BS x T2. The BS is everything. Everything he does is wrong, every decision he makes is wrong, every nominee he names is wrong, every time he speaks it's wrong. The Limbaugh Theory of relativity explains it all. It's not the criticism, it's not the specific items mentioned. It's the day after day after day after day after day of unceasing media attacks. I'll tell you, I have a theory also about Bush's approval numbers. This business of being at 31% now doesn't make any sense if you measure this in terms that have always been used to define presidential popularity in the past. Why, given this economy, his polls ought to at least be 50. You'd have to subtract some because people are uneasy about the war, and they're uneasy because we are fighting it in a minimalist way.
We could be done with this like we could have been done in Vietnam, much shorter period of time. We don't have the guts to do what it would take in one fell swoop to win, so we meander along. There are some other things. But the economy ought to be bringing this up, and it's not. If you look deeply in some of the most recent polls, you find that there are conservatives who are unhappy with Bush, and Republicans, which I have always maintained, and it's about agenda items. It's about conservatism that's not being implemented or even fought for, so there's that. But I also think that there's a fatigue factor. This administration has not done a whole lot to defend itself. It has left that to others, and I think there's a general fatigue among everybody. I mean, you. You probably go out and talk to people and they say, "What do you think about Bush?" You get tired of trying to explain it.
silly
LOL, It took former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Indiana libtard Evan Bayh, and 17 other pollsters and focus groupers to write ONE book on fighting terror...
Reclaiming Their Inner Truman
Centrist Democrats, including two of the party's leading presidential prospects, advanced a foreign policy formula today they hope will reconcile voters to a party perceived as meek and directionless on national security.
↓
The DLC's tough talk joins a cacophony of other voices struggling to attract the attention of Democratic leaders preparing for the contingency of party control of Congress in 2006 and for the '08 presidential race. The Center for American Progress has issued numerous white papers. The liberal American Prospect magazine devoted an issue to emerging Democratic ideas, including many on foreign policy.
Mark Warner, the former Virginia Gov. who was elected two months after 9/11, and Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat who has been witheringly critical of his party's dithering on foreign policy, took turns at the podium. They sounded similar themes, but they differed, often significantly, in register. [MARC AMBINDER
]
Warner likes specifics. "The litany of mistakes are almost unprecedented," Warner said at one point, proceeding to then list the various and sundry errors he attributes to the Bush administration. Or: "We're seeing the ramifications" of [the policy]." And then he listed the ramifications.
Warner said he "gets more than a little annoyed when I hear the president's political folks like Karl Rove, say that Democrats can get caught in a pre-nine eleven mentality. Well, I was the first person elected after September 11th."
He was cautious when describing the use of military force.
His speech drew more on the sweep of history than on the precise dynamics of the present conflict.
And as critical of his party's political dithering on foreign policy than he was of Pres. Bush's policies.
"If you ask me why we lost the last presidential election, I believe it was more than anything else it was because our perceived problems of national security broadly defined and national security, more specifically," he said.
"We're not going to be able to have a dialogue with the American people...[on education and jobs]...if they first don't trust us with those lives."
The presence of two of the party's top presidential prospects was not lost on the organizers of the event. The DLC recognizes that the party will likely not adopt a single message until it anoints a presidential standard-bearer in late 2007 or early 2008. Warner and Bayh took turns greeting DLC chairman Al From and whispering in his ear. Both contributed blurbs to the new DLC book, although Warner noted he was identified as the "Former Governor of Virginia, Indiana."
.
Warner, Bayh and Sen. Hillary Clinton will headline the DLC's annual meeting in Denver this summer.
Left-Wing Unilateralism
On March 19, 2003, Rev. John L. McCullough, executive director of Church World Service, issued a statement opposing the invasion of Iraq.
On May 1, 2006, Rev. McCullough spoke at a "Save Darfur" rally in Washington, D.C. He said, "The people of Darfur no longer have time for diplomatic courtesies, and we have no patience for partisan politics. Already hundreds of thousands have died, and far too many others are at risk of the unrelenting tide of death that is sweeping across hot desert sands.
"The time for political posturing has expired. The time for decisive action is now. Hear us when we say, 'we are America and we are Darfur.' We have reached the moment of our moral imperative, the intertwining of our lives, and we see our common destiny."
Suddenly, the left has discovered the virtue of unilateralism.
That raises the question, how many have to die before liberals will give permission for the United States to act militarily without U.N. approval? One hundred thousand? Four hundred thousand? What's the cutoff point? When did the death toll in Darfur reach the point that the left said, "OK, let's send in the Marines"?
It is worth noting that the "Save Darfur" protesters did not march in front of the United Nations. They rallied in Washington. Despite all of their rhetoric about the U.N., they know where the real power lies. When you need an ethnic group saved from genocidal maniacs right away, Kofi is not the guy to ask. Better to go straight to the top.
And that's the great irony. Many on the left know that the United Nations is a crock, but they dare not admit it. The concept of the inherent goodness of the "international community" working to achieve peace and harmony through democratic means is too important to their world view and too useful to them politically.
"If we act, then the world will follow," Sen. Barack Obama said at the rally two Sundays ago.
Yeah, well, that was kind of the whole point behind invading Iraq. But the left didn't care about Saddam's victims. Maybe there weren't enough of them. That mysterious death threshold had not been met. Or maybe sending troops to Sudan without U.N. approval is OK just because it isn't George W. Bush's idea.
Last week the government of Sudan signed a peace treaty with the largest rebel group in Darfur. It was the second peace treaty U.S. diplomats from the Bush administration have brokered in Sudan. Funny, there has been no left-wing cheering for the President's successes.
If this peace deal holds, perhaps the left will flip-flop again and proclaim the success of diplomacy. But even if it does succeed, it won't bring back the hundreds of thousands who died while waiting for the world to act. It can be said that they were, indirectly, victims of the United Nations.
Under U.N. hegemony, the United States and Britain can no longer halt the slaughter of innocents simply by rattling their sabers. Murderous tyrants, protected by their allies and counterparts inside the U.N., know that the U.N. is brilliantly effective at grinding the tank treads of justice to a halt. The U.N. does not stop evil men from using the machinery of government to slaughter innocents. It only stops the good guys from intervening when that happens.
This is the world the activists of the left have created. And they love it in theory. But when it comes to preventing another genocide, they suddenly discover the value of massive armies deployed without regard for diplomatic courtesies.
One wonders if any of them stop to consider the world that would exist had the more radical types succeeded in transforming Washington so that the federal government concentrated on funding schools and social services and the Air Force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomb. Whose guns would the left ask to borrow then?
Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.
Russ Feingold: Terrorism Is Our Fault
FEINGOLD: The greatest passion is for us to stand up on the critical post-9/11 issues, from Iraq, to the USA Patriot Act, to the president violating the law by authorizing illegal domestic wiretapping. The president likes to say, in response to this sort of concern, that some of us have a pre-9/11 perspective. Many Democrats and others around this country want us to point out that the White House actually has a pre-1776 perspective and that we ought to have the guts to point that out. (Applause.)
RUSH: I don't know who the audience is at this thing. At the National Press Club, you've got to figure it's some Drive-By Media people in there. It's their club. (sigh) Domestic wiretapping. Now, there's a story in the 
On page two of this story comes this interesting little tidbit. "Still, some Democrats quietly worried Monday that their party might help the GOP by making an issue of the spy program." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I tell you, the White House wants this fight. They know it's a slam-dunk. Nothing better than having an Air Force general in uniform up there being ripped to shreds for talking about how he wants to protect the country and accurately explain the NSA foreign surveillance program. The Democrats, by the way, have now posed an idea.
They say, "Well, you know, this is a spy program, very sensitive. We might have to go into executive session for these questions, which means closed session, which means nobody would get to see it. There would only be leaks afterwards. The leaks would probably take the form of the tough questions asked by people like Dianne Feinstein or Russ Feingold, and Leaky Pat Leahy and whoever else." But if they don't do this in public, it means they haven't got the guts for people to see what would actually transpire here, that they want to use leaks from a closed executive session. "I usually can't leak on those things, Rush, intelligence committee, you can't leak." Tell it to Pat Leahy. I don't think he's on that committee anymore because he did leak about an operation we had planned in Libya.
So that's the game plan. If they're getting cold feet they'll go into executive session, if the Republicans let them get away with it, and you never know, given some of the Republican senators. Now, I'm not mentioned in this [next bite], folks, but I know how to read the stitches on a fast ball. I know how to read the tea leaves. I think Feingold is responding to me when I said yesterday that the Hayden hearings will be a winner for Bush.
FEINGOLD: You already hear people saying that this Michael Hayden nomination will be a great opportunity for the White House to show the Democrats are soft on terrorism. You bet the pundits in this town will somehow suggest that, this too, just like my censure resolution, will cause the president's numbers to shoot up. You remember that happening, right? It didn't happen at all. But that's what they're going to say. It's not right.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Nobody joined your stupid censure resolution, and you left the floor, you skedaddled, you got out of there rather than debate it with Republicans. Nobody joined your stupid -- you know, I was thinking about Feingold. What has he ever done besides get elected? Can somebody explain one achievement of Russ Feingold? Other than the censure deal, he makes good speeches to fire up the kook base. He's a munchkin. Resume tape, Alltmont.
FEINGOLD: I take a different view with one qualification. My view is that we should appeal to basic American values in the post-9/11 world.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Do you know what those basic American values are, senator? People like me think you have forgotten them, or if you remember them you disagree with them and are trying to redefine them.
FEINGOLD: By saying that we will stand up to this administration's mistakes
in strategy in the fight against terrorism, and that we will stand up to this administration's unnecessary assault on the rule of law in the guise of the fight against terrorism.
RUSH: Well, there you have it. This is a left-wing kook view. The spy program, Bush doesn't care about finding what spies are doing in this country. He doesn't care about what Al-Qaeda might be plotting. That's just an excuse, because Bush is Bush, and he wants to spy on you. And, of course, the left-wing kooks, that's all they need to hear. They don't ask what does he want to spy on me for? What am I doing in my miserable little kook life that Bush would possibly care about? Bush is not a voyeur. Bush is in bed at 9:30 at night. The last thing George Bush cares about is what idiotic left-wing kook liberals are doing. Besides, they tell us anyway. They're all over announcing everything they're doing, they're marching in the streets. What do they need to be spied on for?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back now to Russ Feingold, a big finale here, the big finish. He says that Democrats have to show that 9/11 is just as personal to them as it is to those who use the issue to intimidate them as Democrats.
FEINGOLD: I say all of this in the belief that somehow we all have to be talking about not this country or that, but how we can best protect American lives at home and abroad.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Get serious. You don't care about it. If you did, you wouldn't be saying and doing 30 to 50% of the things you do. You're trying to undermine victory over this particular enemy, senator, with everything you're doing. That's why this doesn't sell. You can go out there and say, "We need to get tough. We need to show people you don't need to be intimidated. We care about America. We care about America's security." It doesn't sell, Senator. You just don't have the guys on your side to pull it off. I mean, you can say whatever you want but you don't have anybody with any practical experience in any position in the last ten years that you can point to and say, "We want to follow the lead of Democrat X." In fact, I have a 
They loved Roosevelt, but they can't point to him as an example of how they're going to lead country in war. So who are they going to point to? They can say whatever they want, but who are they going to point to? JFK, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter? Who are they going to point to, folks? Zilch, zero, nobody. Play the rest of this, Alltmont.
FEINGOLD: This is our most solemn responsibility.
RUSH: Yep, yep.
FEINGOLD: Democrats should be especially clear that we understand the post-9/11 world. To return to the outset --
RUSH: Stop the tape. The very fact that he has to say that Democrats should be especially clear that we understand the post-9/11 world is an admission that they know the Democrats' position in a post-9/11 world is not only not unclear, it's known exactly for what it is, and it's one that doesn't take the post-9/11 world seriously and thus they can't be trusted.
RUSH: Exactly right. But it gets manifested in far more obscene and dangerous ways in the little gray cells inside the skull of little munchkins like Russ Feingold. The guilt manifests itself in such a way that we are still committing these atrocities of imperialism and racism and bigotry and homophobia, etc, etc., etc., and so when we get hit, part of our foreign policy is learning how to blame ourselves. That's your modern day liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Here's one more. Gibson's next question, "A lot of people would think people of color would think white guilt's a good thing."
STEELE: It sounds like it would be a good thing, but it's not. It's the reverse of that. It's not a guilt of conscience where people struggle with a moral dilemma. It's simply running from the stigmatization as racists. Whites after the sixties, after the -- as I talk about in the book -- the collapsing of white supremacy, became stigmatized as racists and had to then begin dissociate from that and most of our racial policy in America has been more about helping whites sort of fight that stigma than doing anything to help achieve equality.
I mean, Shelby Steele has hit something here that is so -- I mean, one of the most brilliant things to me is simplicity. It's not saying something totally complex that nobody can understand. Brilliance is being able to synthesize what people think is a problem they can't get their arms around and making it so easily understandable that millions grasp it, and that's what he's done in this book. This whole concept that we have guilt over our achievement, guilt over our power, guilt over our past, guilt over our prosperity, our size and all, explains so much, including opinion polls about such things as the economy. One more bite here. Question from Gibson. "So, can you do almost anything in this country if you make white people afraid of being stigmatized as racists?"
STEELE: You have enormous power, absolutely. Whites simply do not feel they have the moral authority to ask for difficult things. For example, not a single president of the United States since the civil rights victories has asked black America to do anything on its own behalf in terms of achieving equality. All the requests are on white America, what whites must do, what institutions must do, so forth, what programs have to be instituted. There's never a president who has enough moral authority to look at his black citizens and say, "What happened to you in the past is terrible, but in order to move into the future, here's some things you're going to have to do."
RUSH: I don't think they don't have the moral authority. They don't have the moral courage. They don't have the guts. This is not a criticism, it's fact. There are a lot of people that do have the courage, and look what happens to them when they say it? I mean, I can remember back in the heat of the homeless debate, I would say something as simple as, "You know, train these people to get a job." And liberals would say, "Easy for you to say," as though I should feel guilty in advocating self-reliance or responsibility. I'm sure it's happened to some of you when you've been in conversations with people. So Shelby Steele here, right on the money. There's never a president who has enough moral authority to look at his black citizens and say, hey, what happened to you in the past is terrible but in order to move into the future you've got to do some things yourself. No, what we get is Bill Clinton proclaiming himself to be the first black president, apologizing all over the world for what we have supposedly done to people all over the world. He is the epitome of what Shelby Steele is talking about,
by the way.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Background Material...
Drive-By Media Falls for Mahmoud's Letter
So in order, Iran's president threw a -- and I told you the media would love this guy. I told you that the media could be played by this guy, that he would be looked at as the peace broker, the man who cares. That Bush would be portrayed as obstinate and uninterested. They know who their allies are in the Middle East in this country, the Democratic Party, the Drive-By Media. So from the 
Then here's another 
irritated
Aid Workers Are Said to Abuse Girls 
By 
in camps for displaced people and in neighborhoods whose residents have returned after being driven away by war. They said men in positions of authority - aid workers and soldiers, government employees and officials in the camps - were abusing girls.
"All of the respondents clearly stated that the scale of the problem affected over half of the girls in their locations," the report said. "The girls reportedly ranged in age from 8 to 18 years, with girls of 12 years and upward described as being regularly involved in 'selling sex,' commonly referred to as 'man business.'" 
In a statement from Liberia, the United Nations said that eight cases of sexual abuse and exploitation involving its workers had been reported since the beginning of the year and that one staff member had been suspended, Reuters reported.
"It's unacceptable behavior," Jordan Ryan, the United Nations' humanitarian coordinator in Liberia, said in an interview with BBC radio from Monrovia, the Liberian capital.
Save the Children said Liberia and the United Nations should set up an office to investigate cases of the sexual exploitation and to work to ensure that the behavior stops, prosecuting the offenders, among other steps.
It also said United Nations workers accused of sexual exploitation should "go through judicial proceedings," and if found guilty, should not be sent elsewhere as peacekeepers.
Isn't the UN such a wonderful organization?
My we are so lucky it exists to solve the world's problems.
are scheming to change the U.S. Constitution without complying with the amendment process.
The Constitution requires that a president be elected by a majority of votes in the Electoral College, with each state's vote weighted based on its population. But some who took an oath to defend our Constitution are plotting to undermine its essential structure by a compact among as few as 11 of the most populous states.
The plan of this Campaign for the National Popular Vote is to get states with at least 270 votes in the Electoral College to enact identical bills requiring their own electors to ignore the winner of their state's election and cast all their state's ballots for the candidate who the state believes received more popular votes than the other candidates nationwide, even if he fails to win a majority of the popular vote.
The campaign gang of frustrated liberals has lined up sponsors for bills in California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana and Missouri. They have already persuaded the Colorado Senate to approve their proposal
.
It's ridiculous and un-American to try to force electors to vote against their constituents. Yet the campaign proposes requiring a state like Louisiana to vote for the candidate who won in other states such as New York.
The U.S. Constitution established the method of electing presidents and it has served us well for more than two centuries. It isn't broke and doesn't need fixing.
The Electoral College represents the inspired genius of our Founding Fathers. It was part of the great compromise the transformed the country from 13 rival colonies into a constitutional republic.
This great compromise gave the United States a Congress consisting of the Senate based on equal representation of the states and a House of Representatives based on population. The Electoral College is the mirror image of this brilliant compromise and allows all states to be players in the process of electing the president.
The Electoral College is the successful vehicle by which a presidential candidate achieves a majority in a functioning political process. The Campaign for the National Popular Vote is an outrageous proposal to construct a fake majority by stealing votes away from some candidates and transferring them to another candidate.
Because of third parties, we've had many elections (including three of the last four) when no presidential candidate received a popular-vote majority. Abraham Lincoln won less than 40 percent of the popular vote and relied on his Electoral College majority for his authority.
Basing the election on a plurality of the popular vote while ignoring the states would be like the New York Yankees claiming they won the 1960 World Series because they outscored the Pirates in runs 55-27 and in hits 91-60. No one challenges the fact that the Pirates fairly won that Series, 4 games to 3.
The fact that most elections are very close makes the Electoral College particularly advantageous. With our loose election procedures (that need to be reformed in several ways), it's easy to make credible charges of election fraud. We remember the Florida recount in 2000 and the attempt to recount Ohio in 2004.
If the popular vote were controlling, chaos would be the predictable result in any close election.
An allegation of voter fraud in one state would begin a fatal chain reaction of challenges and recounts as campaign managers try to scrape up additional hundreds of votes in many states at once.
The elimination of the Electoral College would overnight make irrelevant the votes of Americans in about 25 states because candidates would zero in on piling up votes in large-population states.
The slogan for the Campaign for the National Popular Vote, "Every Vote Equal," is stunningly dishonest because the campaign's proposal is based on legalizing vote-stealing and on changing the rules of presidential elections by a compact of as few as 11 states instead of the 38 states needed to amend the Constitution. The campaign should be repudiated before it goes any further.
The campaign proposal would also eliminate the constitutional role of Congress in dealing with the occasional happenstance of a candidate failing to get a majority of Electoral College votes. The Constitution dealt adequately with this problem in 1824.
The Campaign for the National Popular Vote plan has been editorially endorsed by the New York Times, which called the Electoral College "an antidemocratic relic." The New York Times could demonstrate its devotion to democracy by adopting a democratic one share-one vote system of control of its own newspaper instead of its current system that locks in a preferential voting category for the Sulzberger family holdings.
surprised
I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body... 
Lesbians' brains respond like straight men
WASHINGTON --
Lesbians' brains react
said in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A year ago, the same group reported findings for gay men that showed their brain response to hormones was similar to that of heterosexual women.
In both cases the findings add weight to the idea that homosexuality has a physical basis and is not learned behavior.
"It shows sexual orientation may very well have a different basis between men and women ... this is not just a mirror image situation," said Sandra Witelson, an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
"The important thing is to be open to the likely situation that there are biological factors that contribute to sexual orientation," added Witelson, who was not part of the research team.
The research team led by Ivanka Savic at the Stockholm Brain Institute had volunteers sniff chemicals derived from male and female sex hormones. These chemicals are thought to be pheromones -- molecules known to trigger responses such as defense and sex in many animals.
Whether humans respond to pheromones has been debated, although in 2000 American researchers reported finding a gene that they believe directs a human pheromone receptor in the nose.
The same team reported last year on a comparison of the response of male homosexuals to heterosexual men and women. They found that the brains of gay men reacted more like those of women than of straight men.
The new study shows a similar, but weaker, relationship between the response of lesbians and straight men.
Heterosexual women found the male and female pheromones about equally pleasant, while straight men and lesbians liked the female pheromone more than the male one. Men and lesbians also found the male hormone more irritating than the female one, while straight women were more likely to be irritated by the female hormone than the male one.
All three groups rated the male hormone more familiar than the female one. Straight women found both hormones about equal in intensity, while lesbians and straight men found the male hormone more intense than the female one.
The brains of all three groups were scanned when sniffing male and female hormones and a set of four ordinary odors.
Ordinary odors were processed in the brain circuits associated with smell in all the volunteers.
In heterosexual males the male hormone was processed in the scent area but the female hormone was processed in the hypothalamus, which is related to sexual stimulation. In straight women the sexual area of the brain responded to the male hormone while the female hormone was perceived by the scent area.
In lesbians, both male and female hormones were processed the same, in the basic odor processing circuits, Savic and her team reported.
Each of the three groups of subjects included 12 healthy, unmedicated, right-handed and HIV-negative individuals.
The research was funded by the Swedish Medical Research Council, Karolinska Institute and the Wallenberg Foundation.
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